The Middle School Archive Project
Student Motivation & Dropout Prevention

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The Middle School Archive Project is centered on a 10-year time-capsule and class reunion plan designed to provide a physical connection to each student's future. The first Archive was a 350-pound vault, bolted to the floor in the Quintanilla Middle School lobby in Dallas in 2005. The Archive has 10 shelves to hold letters from all 8th grade classes until their 10-year class reunion. Students write these letters to themselves before leaving the 8th grade. The letter is about their achievements and stories from their life. It will document their efforts toward personal growth and their goals. They seal the finished letter into a self-addressed envelope. They then pose for a photo with their Language Arts Class in front of the Archive holding their letters. After the photo they each place their letter into the Archive themselves.

They receive a copy of this photo with information on the back about their planned 10-year reunion. They know that at the reunion they will retrieve their letter and also be invited to give their "10 years of Wisdom Talk" to then current 8th grade students. They are advised to prepare now for questions 10 years in the future such as: "Would you do anything differently if you were 13 again?"

Results as of April 2008:

• Ninth grade enrollments are normally inflated in many areas of the US due to retention and students taking the 9th grade twice. This factor, combined with the dropout rate, leads to a significant enrollment number decrease from 9th to 10th grade. From 1997 to 2007 an average of only 63.1% of Dallas ISD 9th graders made this transition successfully. Dallas ISD is making progress in this area and in 2007-2008 had a successful transition into 10th grade for 67.9% of the previous years 9th grade students. However this progress is more than doubled by the two high schools, Pinkston and Sunset, attended by the majority of Archive Project students. There was an over 10% increase in the successful transition rate into 10th grade for Sunset and Pinkston high schools combined during the first three years of the Archive Project. By the third year of the Archive Project, 2007-2008, the 10th grade enrollment increase has gone up over 8 percentage points at Pinkston. The percentage of 9th grade students making it into 10th grade increased from the 6 year (2000-2005) average of 57.7% to 66.1% in 2007-2008. At Sunset the percent of 9th making it to the 10th grade increased 13 points, from the 6 year average of 61.7% to 74.8% in 2007-2008. (The spreadsheets with annual numbers upon which these figures and calculations are gathered are linked here. An Excel format copy of that spreadsheet is linked here so the numbers may be more easily verified.) These are historically two of the higher dropout rate high schools in Dallas ISD. Of the 41 high schools in Dallas ISD, according the Dropout Factory listing by John Hopkins University, there were only 8 Dallas ISD high schools with dropout rates higher than Sunset, and only three with dropout rates higher than Pinkston.  If this lowering of dropout rates continues, then Pinkston and Sunset are no longer at the bottom of this list.  If this improvement can be verified as resulting mostly due to students from Quintanilla, then we have evidence that the Archive Project may be having a positive effect on the last two years of improvement. (The 2005-2006 10th grade class was the last class before the Archive Project started.) One fact is certain. Something good is definitely happening at Sunset and Pinkston! This improvement in two of the worst dropout rate high schools in Dallas ISD, with the percent of 9th graders making it to 10th grade raising from less than 60% to over 70% for Pinkston and Sunset combined, is progress to be celebrated, researched, and expanded. They are pulling themselves from behind the other Dallas ISD high schools to now being in the lead in the race to lower dropout rates!

• In May 2007 a 15 question survey was filled out by 400 students before and after the archive letter writing process.  The goal was to measure the effect of the archive letter writing process itself, as well as secure general perceptions of the Archive Project. The results from this first formal survey of students involved in the Archive Project show that the Archive Project is very popular among students.  It also showed that, even though they had known of the writing of the Archive letter for almost 2 years, the actual writing of the letter alone increased the percentage of students planning both graduation and studies beyond high school by over 20%.

 
The Achievement & Goals Archive "lounge" (above) at Quintanilla Middle
 School, is located between the stairs going up to the 8th grade floor.

This project was started at Quintanilla Middle School, an inner-city public school in Dallas Texas serving 1100 students in the 7th and 8th grade.  The original proposal was written, presented to school staff and PTA, and approved in March of 2005. It was funded the next month by the local Lowe's Home Improvement Center.
 

Above is the wording and photo from the sign hanging inside the Plexiglas door of the Archive.

The Middle School Archive Project involves a large vault bolted to the concrete floor inside a closet with a locked, clear Plexiglas door.  It is secured under spotlights in a central location of the school passed over 4 times each school day by all students.  It is called the Achievement & Goals Archive.  Every student is introduced to the vault when they enter as 7th graders.  They will know that before they graduate from the 8th grade they will be allowed, but not required, to write a letter to themselves to be added to the letters already stored in the vault from previous graduating classes.  Their letters will be available to them the week of Thanksgiving the 10th year after their graduation from middle school.  When they return to pick up their letters they will also be invited to share their recommendations with students in the school at that time, giving their "10 years of wisdom talk." What would they be doing if they were 13 again?

The letter 8th grade students write may become a valued family history document. It should be a snapshot of their lives to date, a part of their written history.  It will include stories about them and their friends, family, neighborhood, and school, as well as anything else from the history of their lives to date.  It will help to document their efforts and work toward personal growth. They will then also write about their goals for the future. The letter should be limited to 4 sheets of paper, front and back if needed.  It must fit inside a normal business size envelope. They are to address the envelope to themselves either at their current home address, or, if no family members may be at that address in 10 years, in care of a relative or friend, someone who will probably still be at their same address in 10 years.

Nobody can promise a student that they will be the ones who open their letter in 10 years.  Alumni no longer able to receive mail through the old address they had placed on the envelope will need to contact the school before November of that 10th year so they can be invited to the opening of the Archive for their letter.  If they do not provide a corrected address before that May then the letter they addressed 10 years before will be mailed to a bad address and potentially lost.  There are also accidents in life.  Two Quintanilla students died tragically  the summer and fall of 2005, one in a drowning accident during the summer and another in an automobile accident that fall. Such realities of life must be spoken of before students write their letters. In a situation when a student dies this letter may become an especially valuable family possession for a grieving family. Students must know this letter may become a treasured part of their written family history. Most probably they will share it someday with their spouse, children, and grandchildren.

The "Ten Years of Wisdom Talk" mentoring component will start once alumni begin returning the 10th year after their graduations to pick up their letters. In November of that 10th year notices will be mailed to each of the addresses on the envelopes addressed by the graduates from 10 years before. The notice will welcome those graduates back to pick up their letters written almost 10 years earlier.  It will tell them the date and time during Thanksgiving week of the opening of the Achievement & Goals Archive for their letters.  At this reunion they will be given their letters and asked to share with the current students any wisdom they have gained of life during those 10 years. Thinking of giving this "10 years of wisdom talk" may also encourage and direct alumni as the years pass leading toward their return. This talk is planned for November so that the then current 8th grade students will have more to consider during the 6 months before they write their own letters for the Achievement & Goals Archive in May. "How can I best plan for my own personal growth?"

The archived letters will be mailed by the 10th anniversary of their writing to all students who have not been able to come to Quintanilla to pick up their letters between Thanksgiving and May. The letters will be mailed in May to the addresses placed on the envelopes 10 years earlier, or to corrected addresses received. This will allow for room to be made in the vault for the new letters current Quintanilla 8th graders will write in May to continue the tradition.

The letter writing process can be personally difficult for students, as was found with the class of 2005, the first class to write such letters. Most students were very excited by the process and wrote at length of their history and future plans.  One young student, a new single parent, was very upset at the idea and cried at the very idea of writing such a letter. She was stuck in a fixed mentality, not seeing the opportunities for her own growth and that of her child.  Her letter was never written.  Could that student's life have been different if this project, reinforcing the potential for growth no matter what the situation, had started years sooner? Hopefully that student, and the other students who chose not to write letters, will still write letters for the vault.  They could certainly be some of the most proud alumni returning to their 10 year reunion.

Photographs given each student were a positive addition in 2006.  The students who had written letters for the Archive in their Language Arts classes in 2006 posed with that teacher, their classmates, and their letter in front of the Archive for photos.  Then each student personally placed their letter on shelf number 6 in the Archive for all 2006 letters. Large 4" x 6" copies of the group photos taken were then made and given to each student in the photo.  On the back of each photo was a large mailing label with the following wording:  

This is your Language Arts Class on May 12, 2006 posing in front of the Achievements & Goals Archive at Quintanilla Middle School, 2700 Remond Dr., Dallas, Texas 75211, phone 972-502-3200. A letter you wrote to yourself is now inside the Archive. Sometime the fall of 2015 you will be invited to the reopening of the Archive before Thanksgiving. Please call Quintanilla if you have not heard from us by November of 2015, or if you want to help with the reunion, or if you no longer can receive mail at the address placed on your envelope in the Archive. We want you to be able to join us for the opening of the Archive, and your class reunion. If you cannot attend the Thanksgiving, 2015, Reunion we still need a correct address so you will get your letter when it is mailed the first week of May, 2016. May you prosper these next 10 years,    Your Quintanilla Family

These photos quickly became valued possessions. Students began signing the back of each others photos as soon as they were given out. It was obvious this was a memento they planned to keep. Several of that small minority of students who had chosen not to write letters decided to belatedly write letters for the archive even though they were too late for the photo process.  In 2007 almost all students wrote letters for the School Archive. A tradition of class photos in front of the Archive was established.  Photos of classes in front of the Archive with their letters are now seen in Language Arts Classrooms and other locations of the school. All students know this is part of a process they want to be involved in.

School counseling staff know such letter writing is a time for counseling issues to surface. Counseling staff are available during the letter writing so counseling issues may be more effectively addressed. Throughout the year teachers and counselors can talk of the letters students will be writing for the Achievement & Goals Archive to help focus those students on their futures and reinforce a growth mentality.  Encouraging preliminary drafts of materiel to eventually be placed into the Archive Letter could be used by counselors and teachers in many settings to help motivate students to plan for their futures.

Liability Issues: Many students invest multiple hours drafting and redrafting their letter for the Archive. It is recommended students be encouraged to keep a copy of any letter they value. In spite of the locked and secured vault, it is possible that letters can be lost in many different ways. It also must be emphasized that letters may fall into the hands of others who may not respect confidential information.  Thus, caution should be exercised in what is written.

Students may see the similarities between this project and life. What they do and what they write is what will be there when the Archive is opened in 10 years.  What they achieve over the next 10 years is what they will bring with them to share with the then current students when they return in 10 years. They control this project and nobody else. Their efforts and their work can help them grow and change their world, and their children's world.

To be able to say "See you in 10 years" has the ability to change the relationships between a teacher and a student, and among students.  A student's view of school, and the world, will certainly change with such simple statements.

The annual costs for a Middle School Archive Project during the first 9 years of the project are estimated to be about $2 per student.  This would be the cost for the envelopes and paper required as well as the photo and label given each student at the end of the year. It is anticipated that the donation of the vault and expenses for it's installation in a central location under spotlights can be secured with relative ease from any of a multitude of sources.  The total of such installation expenses is anticipated to be in the $1,500 - $4,000 range. Once the Archive Project is over 9 years old the expenses for postage and contacts with alumni will probably triple the annual expenses.  Considering the current expenses faced in education, and the returns anticipated with the Middle School Archive Project, these expenses are minimal.  All that is needed is a volunteer, or team of volunteers, to create and manage an Archive Project in any middle school.  These volunteers need to be people interested in helping students to focus on their futures.

Challenge a middle school, or a middle school teacher you may know, with a donation to help start their Archive Project! For example, as little as a pleasant invitation may get school staff interested in studying the idea to help their students. As little as $500 would cover initial expenses and getting the project started. A $10,000 donation to a middle school can challenge them to start an Archive Project and cover the expenses for installation of the vault and other expenses related to the photographs and letter writing for the first 5 years, maybe even 10 years of the project.  In the process the lives of thousands of students during those years will be touched as they plan for their futures and their 10-year reunions, something they would not have thought about otherwise. The school culture will change over time. Print out a copy of this web page and take it along with your check to the middle school you would like to help change. It will make a difference only if the school you select is ready to start an Archive Project. Or you could make the offer to several schools with the understanding that the one with the best plan will be selected. Several alternatives are possible to get one or more Archive Projects started.

In Dallas ISD there are 35 middle schools without Archive Projects as of 4-3-08. The offer of $2,000 a year for the next 10 years to each of them could lead most of them to start an Archive Project. It is certainly less expensive per student, and apparently more effective, than other dropout prevention programs.

Challenge one school to start an Archive Project with this year's 8th grade class!

If we as adults show enough respect for students and the content of their letters to place these letters in a fire-proof vault for 10 years, a vault that students will see in a place of respect every day, and if students know they will be asked to share what they have learned with future students when they return, then our "body language" will give a set of strong messages to all students:

• Their futures are VERY important and this project is theirs.

• Nobody else reads their letters as nobody controls their futures more than they themselves do.

• They are the real final judges.

• What they do will make a difference.

• They can make the "10 years of wisdom talks" a priceless middle school tradition.

"See you in 10 years!"

Links to Archive Project documents, a photo history, & articles
 listed with the most recent additions first:

1.  The Ten Commandments of the Archive Project, created in an attempt to identify and simplify the items that could weaken and/or destroy an Archive Project if not followed.

2. To understand dropout rates a compilation of an 11-year history of student enrollment by grade in Dallas ISD, with number of diplomas given each year was created. It gives various ways of calculating student dropout rates using data that should easily be available from every school district.  While this report was rather easy to compile from available data on the TEA website, and appears to give a very good idea of the dropout issue in DISD, similar reports cannot easily be located online for any district in the US. Student enrollment numbers by grade are very hard to locate online for most US school districts. Related to this DISD data, but not the same, are the DISD student enrollment predictions for 2006/2007 and 2007/2008 that are public records from the DISD web site.

3. What do the students think of the Archive Project and their graduation plans? In May 2007 a 15 question survey was filled out by 400 students before and after the archive letter writing process.  The goal was to secure measurements of the effect of the archive letter writing process as well as general perceptions of the Archive Project. Here are the results from this first formal survey of students involved in the Archive Project.

4. "Students getting safe place to store dreams" is an article published 5-26-07 in the Dallas Morning News about the Archive Project.

5. "The Dropout Cure: Students Seeing Their Future," an article about a connection to the future, as provided by The Middle School Archive Project, being essential in any dropout prevention effort.

6. The new book, published February 2006, by Dr. Carol S. Dweck of Stanford, "Mindset: A new Psychology of Success,"  may have the most profound impact on the Archive Project.  If the Middle School Archive Project can be another force in helping ALL teachers and students move toward obtaining the "growth mindset" described in Dr. Dweck's masterpiece, then the world of education will begin a sustained revolution.

7. Dr. Robert Coles in his 1989 book "The Call of Stories : Teaching and the Moral Imagination" provides powerful support for the value of having students write their stories. A professor who taught under Dr. Coles at Harvard spoke of the lessons in this book after he was told of the Middle School Archives Project the summer of 2006.  This book has profound potential applications within the Archive Project.

8. February 26, 2006, an article "Letters to be delivered in a decade,"  by freelance writer, Richard Gonzalez, was published in the Sunday Fort Worth Star Telegram. Here is a scanned copy of that article.  He wrote: "They write letters as boys and girls to read as men and women."

9. A one page handout, front and back, to use in presenting Archive Project idea.

10. "Students at Quintanilla write letters that won't be read for 10 years" is an article from the January 30, 2006 DISD Communicator.

11. Students offer '10 Years of Wisdom' is another article about the Archive Project distributed in the December 2005 Better Teaching newsletter, on the top of page 4,  distributed by The Teacher Institute, www.teacher-institute.com.

12.     Archive Builds a Stronger Future - 09/16/2005

13. A photo history of the project

14. The instructions given to the students for use in writing their letters for the vault

15. Second letter sent to Lowe's with photos of planned location for vault

16. The original proposal and the First letter sent to Lowe's that ultimately led to funding

You may freely use the ideas and materiel on this web site.  It is only asked that you share your results, and any positive changes you may make to the project design, so that more students may benefit. Please let us know if you see your students moving from a fixed mentality to a growth mentality (see Dr. Dweck's work mentioned above) as your Archive Project begins to have the most positive affect possible on students.

The Middle School Archive Project ideas described on these pages may be shared and used freely at no cost by anyone interested in motivating students. Your comments and/or questions about the project are valuable.  Please email them to bbetzen@studentmotivation.org.

This web site is not managed by Dallas ISD or any school within Dallas ISD. It is the web project of a Dallas ISD teacher who wants to keep more students in school by spreading information about the Middle School Archive Project hoping other schools may want to try it both within and outside Dallas ISD.                                                  

Last Updated: Tuesday, May 13, 2008

Bill Betzen LMSW (Emeritus)
bbetzen@studentmotivation.org

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•   A view of St. Ann's School in Little Mexico, the first school to serve Hispanic students in Dallas.